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Pretty good result for free speech

By Kurt Kleiner

WHEN Philip Zimmerman wrote a program to help people keep their e-mail safe from prying eyes, and posted it on the Internet, it never occurred to him that he might be smuggling a secret weapon out of the country. But after the program spread around the world, the US government began to investigate Zimmerman on suspicion of breaking laws against exporting munitions. In the government’s eyes, electronic cryptography that could help an enemy protect its secrets from US intelligence agencies counts as a weapon.

Three years after the investigation began, the US Attorney General’s Office has decided not to prosecute Zimmerman. The computer consultant, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, had become a central figure in the campaign to protect free speech, and thousands of people donated money to help pay for his defence. “It turned my life upside down. It changed my life. Not just the investigation, but the reaction from the rest of the world,” he says.

Zimmerman released the program in 1991, calling it Pretty Good Privacy. He based it on a previously published cryptographic system which is considered virtually unbreakable, and says he wrote it so that people could protect their privacy.

The program was snapped up by Internet enthusiasts and quickly spread worldwide. But while the program may have been developed by a private individual, from the US government’s point of view it was a military technology and could not be exported without permission.

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Zimmerman and his supporters complain that the law violates the right of free speech. American software manufacturers also dislike it because it makes it hard for them to compete with rivals overseas who are not bound by such restrictions. Many customers want to be able to encrypt information before sending it over a network or telephone line.

Zimmerman also argues that posting something on the Internet is not the same as exporting it. And he adds that the computer he posted his program to was in the US, and if it spread after that it was not his fault.

The assistant attorney general in San Jose, California, who was leading the investigation was not available for comment. But Zimmerman’s lawyer, Phil Dubois, says he thinks the government realised its case was weak and was probably afraid of a constitutional challenge to the law if it prosecuted.

“They didn’t want to get into a policy debate about whether Americans have the right to use this technology. Ultimately, it’s about whether people have the right to communicate in private,” says Dubois.